Veteran’s Memorial, Soldier Field

I was thinking these scenes could not have been possible before the election — with all the intensity, anticipation and unabashed salesmanship — and that they preview at least one thread of the tone and feel that’s coming.

Through eight years of Bush, there was never a political moment nearly this silent, this personal and thoughtful, this slowed down. Obama and Tammy Duckworth are home. They are not in a rush. They are in public space, yet alone.

What Obama restores here is something Bush suppressed in his assault on the American psyche. It’s stillness, and poetry.

(image 1: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters. image 2 & 3: Tannen Maury/Getty. Barack Obama and paraplegic Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs and a member of the Illinois National Guard, place a wreath at Bronze Soldiers Memorial in Chicago November 11, 2008. )